There was a time where people faked their accounts being hi-jacked as a way of duplicating really expensive skins. They would then turn around and sell the skin which was scammed on a site like OpSkins and then keep the duplicated skin in their main account and still play with it. Not anymore though, Steam wised up and made some changes.

So, I'm confused. I just popped over to OpSkins, after a quick perusal, it appears that you can buy different weapons of varying conditions for wildly varying prices. Couple questions. Are those prices in real dollars? Do people actually buy shit for that price? (A knife for $1000+) Has the world gone full-on insane? Why?

The knife skins are extremely rare and cost money to get (you have to open cases of skins using keys which are over â2 and it takes a lot of attempts to be lucky enough to get a knife skin, that make it rare and cost actual money to get) and you can resell your items though on Steam Valve keeps 15% of the value.

Yeah, I guess sex-appeal is what you're buying and CS:GO skins maybe do a poor job there. Maybe it make some people excited but...Guess "I've got $5000 in CS:GO skins!" may not even impress on a girl. CS:GO-girls?.. then again all they will want to have is free skins anyway.

I've probably spent a couple hundred on War Thunder for planes and tanks, I don't see this as being really any different.

As for why I spent that money on the game as opposed to...say buying another piece of gear for my music or my PC? I already have what I need to do what I want, anything above that would just equal more clutter. As for why that particular game? I had 2 relatives that fought in WWII and I consider it one of the most fascinating periods when it comes to planes and tanks. While you can progre

I've probably spent a couple hundred on War Thunder for planes and tanks, I don't see this as being really any different.

The big difference here, is I assume that planes and tanks in this game serve a purpose. IE, you can buy and utilize more powerful equipment to gain an advantage over your competitor. The "add ons" aid the progression of the game. And in your example, I can understand spending a couple bucks here and there. In this instance, a $1,000 dollar knife skin adds exactly zero play value.

But, I guess if someone wants to blow a grand on something that I feel is useless, that is their prerogative. It pisses me off

if they released a skin that changed the knife to a dildo, would you buy it? for 5 dollars, 10 dollars? do you know someone who would?

$5, yeah, in a heart beat. $10, probably, but I'd hesitate for a couple seconds. $20, maybe, if I was drunk. $50, not a chance in hell. I won't spend $50 on a game, much less something to make something in that game look different.

But I'm not talking about $5 and $10 skins, I'm talking about spending a grand. And I'm talking about deluding minors into wagering money thinking they have a chance of obtaining something of more value.

You are correct, planes like the Wirraway and Tuck's Gladiator, or tanks like the SD.KFZ. 140/1 and Panzer III N? Are NOT giving me a "competitive advantage" and in fact can be quite a challenge to compete with compared to the regular vehicles....but ya know what they DO have? FUN, they are fun to drive or fly, and I have fun when I whip them out and take them into battle.

And yes I do this to help support the game and it lets me have fun at the same time, a win/win in my book.

Actually? Most of them have at best equal and most of the time worse performance than what is in the regular free tech tree...I buy them because....well I like the whole "mad scientist" aspect of early WWII and like to support the developers of games that I enjoy.

Take for example the Australian planes in game, both of which I own, the CAC Wirraway and Boomerang. The Wirraway is IRL a trainer that they slapped some guns and bombs on as an emergency fighter, the Boomerang was a Wirraway that a Jewish refugee

For (extremely roughly) the same reasons that copy-paste commands don't work on bitcoins. Sure, you can duplicate your bitcoins as much as you want (in the case of these knife skins, you can install as many knife-skin mods as you want) but once you transfer those bitcoins to someone else, as far as everyone else is concerned, they belong to that other person. No matter how many knife-skin mods you have installed on your computer, the "digital goods" are in somebody else's safe deposit box.

Wow.. just wow. Seems the only smart thing to do is to stay far, far away from that. I'm ok with the government giving money value by limiting it... because they're the freaking government. I can wrap my head around physical goods having value, because only so many can be manufactured. I can even kind of understand bitcoin, though I would never use it, because it is limited by no one except for its own internal mechanism. But having a game company tell me that something virtual has value because they a

What about all the brands?Have you never worn any clothes from a cloth-brand which is more expensive because it's that brand rather than because the clothes are so fucking awesome in quality or cut?What about shining Apple logotypes?Maybe you feel more comfortable spending more money on a eau de toilette which wear the Armani or Boss brand than Wanker-SteveÂs (ok, I admit that would be an awesome brand to wear, "Wanker-Steve's secret pussy-magnet juice" (Then again if he had such a good product why wou

Honestly, I do most of my shopping at wal-mart. The clothes I have get worn until they wear out and I can't tell you what brand they are. I drive a minivan because that is what fits the practical needs of my family. If you're looking to make this case, then you are definitely talking to the wrong person. I don't attach any value to any of those things, and I'm completely fine with the way I am without them.

I don't play CS:GO but I have a substantial amount of Fake Digital Stuff in my Team Fortress 2 "backpack". I've spent at least several hundred dollars on completely digital "goods" in TF2 over the years I've been playing it (since open beta, October 2007). Mostly I haven't regretted the individual "purchases" I've made, and to a large part it gives me joy. I budget it as "entertainment" money, so as long as I'm entertained to a degree I deem of sufficient value in exchange for my money, I don't mind giving

Knifes don't drop when you die so opposite of the ranged weapons where you drop them and someone else can pick them up and then run around with your super-cool skin being informed it's yours and in the case of StatTrak enabled how StatTrak isn't enabled because the skin/weapon knows it's not held by the correct owner.. but if it was a different weapon that's what would happen.The knife is yours only but as soon as people die in the game they become specta

The day I attach my self esteem to something that isn't real is the day I seriously start to reexamine my life. I don't really believe in fancy clothes or make-up either. I've always been able to understand that anyone can wear a suit, and a person's intelligence and skill is not attached to it. But I have to say, at least those things are real. I guess it just surprises me that people could take things to an even greater level of frivolousness than that.

It is real. It's "just information" but so is your bank account balance. I assume you may care somewhat about the later at-least..

Also I'm not convinced those people lack self-esteem otherwise. I don't care for it really but I guess I could had bought some cheap skins because I've put 300+ hours into the game and if I ran around with â5 in skins and would lose â1 if I sold them would that really mattered if I thought it was cool to run around with them / see something different / know some others

So you pay and you win the game or kick ass.. where is the reward in that? All you did was invest more money than anyone else. More people are likely to consider you as a bigger loser than a bigger winner. Anyway, I know I am fighting an uphill battle here. Long story short, putting money into anything is not a replacement for character.

It might simply be that you and the people who pay for this are different. Perhaps you're unusual in that everything you buy has practical value. If that is true, you're the outlier. I don't buy this stuff, I find the prices crazy, but they obviously get a reward out of it. You might not be expending enough effort to see from another's perspective here.

Well, some people eat shit. Literally, some people eat shit. I don't understand them either. Sometimes people do things that don't make sense and there is really no understanding it. Sometimes they happen to be part of a small minority and sometimes they are a majority. It doesn't make their behavior any more reasonable. With that said, I'm trying to understand. That is why I'm having this conversation here on Slashdot.

The day I attach my self esteem to something that isn't real is the day I seriously start to reexamine my life.

You should start now, then.

I don't really believe in fancy clothes or make-up either.

But you believe in your smugness; you parade it in this thread as if it was something to be proud off. You imply that the peoples self-esteem are attached to some frivolous thing.

Get over yourself. You've got hobbies that cost you money and give you entertainment, I don't see anyone here pointing out how frivolous your hobbies are - how they are a waste of money.
And on the off-chance that you have no hobbies, then still I have to say - Get Over Yourself - you're not somehow bett

Well i didn't use real money. But in eve i lost 6 carriers 4 dreads and a bunch of very shiny internet space ships. All up about 2000USD worth *if i used real money*. And well many people really do. I though it was strange at first. But then well if that is their hobby, why not. You will spend more on shiny golf clubs if you play golf. I paid far more for a mill and a lathe just for my rocket hobby. And well yea those expensive golf clubs are no more useful really than an internet space ship or a internet k

Also beyond what I said before about paying for keys to open cases which rarely give out knives:Even if you get a knife they have virtual wear of their skins so to say with more complete/full skins normally being worth more than the worn ones.On top of that people may decorate their skins with stickers, stickers cost money too but some are more rare and some have signatures from e-sport players at specific events and so on.A few of the skins also have "StatTrak" capability which mean that they have a counte

They arent wrong. Most AV software bothers the hell out of you with notifications and constantly tries to frighten you. Its not the installing that is difficult, its living with the software day-to-day that pisses people off.

Exactly this. I'm a programmer. I can install AV software easily. But, I've never used a machine with it installed where it doesn't become a giant pain in the ass with all the notifications and slow downs and what not. I just stick to Unix-like OSes, use ad-block and noScript, and hope that the malware authors will target easier targets. It's a gamble, but there are pros and cons and for me the pros of not running it out weigh the cons of not running it (plus I back up my important files to multiple off-sit

In case anyone cares. AVG, Avira and Avast! are all nagware, and AVG has an overzealous protection regime that sometimes evaporates files you really would have liked to have restored from the "virus vault" (ugh)

Without Flash, Adobe or Microsoft installed on their machines and without running external 3rd-party software, what do OS X users have to be afraid of?

Bold mine. So you're depending on the user to not go around a security feature to get a shiny app. But these "Steam Stealers" mainly work on the principle of fooling users into installing trojans. Even OS X users like forbidden fruit, which is why you can find instructions on how to install 3rd party apps in OS X, and isn't it funny how they mention Steam?

Valve does not reverse exchanges as it can be difficult to do so. Scammer trades item to unsuspecting Player A, Player A trades that item and something else to Player B, Player B sells it to Player C on the market...Player B's unrelated item he got is traded to Player D... The Scammer sells his account with Player A's stuff on it for real money... and it just gets more convoluted form there. Valve has tended to just duplicate the affected items instead but this has been abused by people who fake being scamm

I use steam and really can't find the will to care about this. Granted I don't play any games that use steam marketplace stuff in an important way. The most I use the market for is completing holiday badges for personal amusement. There is never more than a couple dollars in my balance and the items in my inventory are hardly worth posting in the market for sale.

When companies such as Steam can back their virtual products with the same security and universally guaranteed value as federal currency, perhaps I will change my mind. So far it seems to take more than a $10 warez for a sleezeball in Russia to take money out of my personal bank account and make it available for their own personal use.

Guess you may view the game access as permanent then again the current monetary system may not be either.

As long as people trust the Steam items they are very different from any other currency though, you can exchange them for real money (on Steam in your Steam wallet but on the side say with Paypal) and you could get other games or whatever with the money.

Supposedly Steam has said before you'd be able to download your games even if they went bust or whatever, I don't know if that's worth anything but for s

I paid a whole dollar for Ring Runner, a 2d space sim that is really fun to play.I don't care if it is virtual. I don't care if I don't own it. I don't care if Steam might do something wonky I lose access. It cost me basically nothing and is lots of fun.

No, we're talking about something even more ephemeral than a Steam game. We're talking about items for Steam games. People are not only spending money to buy games, they're spending money to buy items for their characters in these games. And they have enough monetary value to be worth stealing, so there's malware for that. Is there a number for that rule?

I personally think that buying items for games when you've already paid for the game or when the game is a moving target and the value of what you've paid

It was a PITA. Had to go through the recovery process and change all my passwords, before I could play DOTA2 again... All for what, so some Russian teen can root through my account, and see I have nothing worth stealing? This is the first time it has happened to me, but I have had about 5 or 6 recent attempts prior to that. Lame. Seems to be getting worse. If Steam wants to continue growing, they are going to have to deal with this issue.

And this is where Valve's stance on VAC being zero tolerance, permanent, and in place regardless of if your account was hijacked or not needs to be addressed. You get a VAC ban, you're not going to be able to participate in the Steam community or any online game in any fashion without being harassed endlessly, or repurchasing all games on a new account. Seen it time and time again even if VAC is not relevant to whatever discussion is at hand. I can only hope that with all the security I've set up on my Stea